One Night in New York
by Ginger Glinda the Tangerine
Summary: RENT from the POV of the homeless people... Now complete! My first fic, so please R&R but be kind! Rated T for language.
1. Chapter 1

**One Night In New York**

December 24th, 9pm, Eastern Standard Time. Another Christmas Eve, another hundred or so residents of New York fall below the poverty line. Yup, that's us. Just a buncha statistics struggling to survive against AIDS, sleet, cops and drivers who won't fucking tip us for cleaning their windscreens at traffic lights- well, when I say tip _us_, I really just mean the Squeegie Man (yes, he has a real name, no, he won't tell anyone what it is). He's the only one of us who's still unjaded enough to believe that people don't actually mind him eking out his honest living on their front windscreen while they're late for work (far be it from me to point out that they have absolutely no right to complain about the guy freezing his butt off doing them a favour while they sit in the warmth with their Mickey D's and their mass-produced Gap dresses).

We trudged our freezing butts along Avenue B towards the only remaining phone booth in Alphabet City, where the guys liked to amuse themselves by making collect prank calls. It wasn't occupied for long- some poor guy in a long yellow vest and warm-looking coat was dragged out of it by a couple of criminal element types, who purloined said coat- minus one sleeve- and ran off into the darkness.

"Merry fucking Christmas," Danny spat.

"Some people have no festive spirit," Sue mourned. "Someone should go help the poor guy."

We all looked at her for a second, then got distracted by the sound of drumming.

I looked over to see Angel, who busked around Avenue A sometimes. He saluted us with his drumstick and kept playing.

"What's the time?" Sue asked.

"About twenty past two, probably," Danny replied. We stared at him.

"What? I checked the watches on display in the window of Saks when we walked past before. They _all_ said ten past two, so don't go telling me I'm wrong."

Mike slapped him upside the head, and we all turned as the mugged guy coughed, tried to stand up and fell against the side of the phone booth. Angel looked up and went over to him, concerned.

"Here it comes," I whispered to the others. If any of us had had (working) watches, we would have timed the conversation. I think it took Angel about two minutes to successfully flirt his way into this guy's life. As they walked away Angel threw a wink at us over his shoulder.

We shuffled away towards the community centre, where the last of out number, molly, lay curled in a puffy jacket on a blanket.

"Hey, Blanket Woman," Mike called.

"Is it fucking freezing or what?" she replied.

"Merry Christmas," Sue offered shyly.

"Seen Tine recently?" Molly shifted position and winced. She'd been getting progressively worse back pain since around July, but, surprisingly, no-one seemed to want to treat her. I guess physiotherapists don't appreciate rejigging their treatments to suit people without any pillows, mattresses or heat to ease their suffering.

"She…" Danny trailed off. Even his tactless, alcohol-rotted brain couldn't quite figure out a way to tell the woman who'd always had a soft spot for the least lucid member of our fraternity that Tina had been huddled in a gutter wracked with shivers and pleading for someone to get her a fix only two days before, and no-one had seen her since.

"Haven't seen her for a while," he rallied.

"Right," Molly grunted, letting her eyes flutter closed.

We moved on respectfully. She needed her peace. She was getting old.

"Goddamn kids," we heard her mutter.


	2. Chapter 2

Later, we found ourselves, plus Squeegie Man, back at the phone booth. Some rich guy in a Range Rover had pulled up and was yelling up at the loft of the building across the street.

"Hey! Come down, I wanna talk to you."

The Squeegie Man seized his chance, pulling out the item for which he was named and heading for the car. The rich guy turned around.

"Hey, you. Bum."

Squeege looked up innocently.

"Yeah, you! Move over. Get your ass off of that Range Rover!"

Squeege held up his hands and backed away.

A weedy blonde dude in a striped scarf, his glasses glinting in the light of the street lamps, emerged from the building, followed by another scrawny blonde, whose hair was longer and who hung back uncertainly in the doorway, and- surprise, surprise- Angel and the mugged guy, now looking a lot cleaner. Angel had changed into a Santa suit, tights, and a black wig.

Glasses Boy lifted a camera and pointed it at the rich dude, who glowered.

"That attitude towards the homeless is exactly what Maureen is protesting tonight," he commented, then narrated for the camera. The rich dude's name, we learned, was Benjamin Coffin III, and from the sound of it, he'd left his buddies to marry some yuppy scum type. Our opinion of him sank lower.

Mr Coffin folded his arms huffily. "Maureen is protesting losing her performance space. Not my attitude."

We got it then. The protest in the next lot over was against this guy and his business associates repossessing it and turfing out everyone who lived (if you could call it living) in the tent city that had sprung up there.

"Fuck this, man," Mike muttered.

"Let's key his car," offered Danny.

"With what? Our house keys?"

"Lighten up, man."

Squeege quietly opened Coffin's bonnet. "Honest living," he shrugged, and emptied a substantial amount of suds into the water tank. We skedaddled before Coffin noticed, but Sue hung back.

"What?" we all crowed at her.

She pushed her hair behind her ear. Not because it looked better, or anything, just because it was a nervous habit of hers. Sue had many nervous habits, not least of which was pretending not to be nervous.

"Life Support starts at nine thirty," she explained. "I think Angel's going. I might go with him. Her." She turned to me and touched my arm. "Alex, you should come too."

I shrugged her off. "I don't do all that touchy hugging shit. You know that."

"Okay," Sue murmured, but I could tell she wasn't going to give up on me yet.

Taking pity on her hanging out with a bunch of touchy huggy no-hopers on Christmas Eve, I offered to wait for her with the guys.

She frowned. "It's at the community centre. There's always a bunch of cops down there. Wouldn't you get… I don't know…"

If Sue tried to clean people's windscreens they'd probably let her out of sheer pity. She shrugged hopefully at us, but we got what she meant. Even we could see we weren't the most desirable elements of society.

"We'll sit in the entrance or something," Danny volunteered. "We're as much fucking community as anyone else."


	3. Chapter 3

_I keep forgetting to say this, but I own nothing. Not a smidgeon._

…

We walked towards the market later that night, Sue scatting a tune she said she'd heard Angel's new accessory humming. His name was Tom, she said, and he was lovely (Sue thinks many people are lovely, though, including the fuck that gave her AIDS, so we couldn't really trust her judgement on that one). We were more relaxed than we had been all day- so much so that Danny started singing, some monotonous thing about Christmas bells, which he swore was a real Christmas carol. Mike and I joined in for sheer entertainment value, and we'd got up to three-part harmony before we realised just how ridiculous we were being. Sure, the Christmas bells might have been ringing, but they were out of town. Santa Fe, we decided.

Squeege had left us to go find more unfortunate drivers, but we passed him crying, "Honest living, man!" at a 4WD, which skidded away, spraying him with slush.

"Feliz Navidad?" he called to the next driver hopefully.

"Poor Squeegie Man," Sue murmured.

We approached Molly's place again. A couple of cops were hassling her, trying to get her to move. Danny sidled up to them.

"Evening, officers," he schmoozed.

The blonde guy with the camera from Benjamin Coffin's apartment building melted into view next to Danny, cranking the camera for all it was worth. "Smile for Ted Koppel, Officer Martin."

The cops knew when they were beat. They huffed lungfuls of frozen air at our mismatched group and began to walk away. Danny bowed low.

"And a merry Christmas to your family," he called.

You could almost see the cops' rolling eyes through the backs of their heads. "Right," they muttered.

Angel and his new buddy joined Camera Boy. We helped Molly to her feet, whereupon she rounded on the blonde guy with fire in her eyes.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?"

Camera Boy turned, slightly shocked. Molly ripped into him like a stray cat in a garbage can.

"I don't need no goddamn help from some bleeding-heart cameraman! My life's no for you to make a name for yourself on!"

Angel stepped forward to put a restraining hand on her arm. "Easy, sugar, easy," he soothed. "He was just trying to-"

"Just trying to use me to kill his guilt," Molly spat. She was having none of it. "It's not that kinda movie, honey."

She turned to us. "Let's go." 

We started to move off, Molly complaining loudly and bitterly about how many motherfucking artists there were around. We'd almost managed to get her to shut up when she turned back and yelled at the threesome, who were still standing staring at her.

"Hey, artist!"

The blonde guy held the camera to his chest protectively, as if either of them could protect the other.

"You got a dollar?" Molly snapped. He shrugged apologetically and she let out a short, barking laugh of disgust. "I thought not."

"Come on, Blanket Woman," Mike laughed, taking her arm. "Let's get out of here."

"Fucking artists," Molly seethed, stamping her feet as she walked to keep warm. "Anyone found Tina yet?"

We all exchanged guilty looks. What with the limited excitement of Coffin's visit and Life Support, none of us had given her a second thought.

"Am I the only one that ever does anything around here?" Molly fumed. We coincidentally forgot to point out that she'd barely even changed position since ten o'clock that morning.


	4. Chapter 4

_I dedicate the leather bag in this chapter to my sister._

…

We found ourselves on St Mark's Place. The vendors were still going strong, even at this hour of the night.

"We should open a stall," Mike said, picking up a woollen hat and trying it on Sue.

"Five stalls," Danny added.

"Eight," Molly laughed. "I could buy a new blanket."

"We could buy clothes," Sue breathed.

"Perfume," I laughed, swooning.

Mike caught me and handed me a leather bag, which I admired, before handing it back to the vendor.

"Chocolate!" whooped Danny, clicking his heels together.

"We could have a real store," Sue offered, smoothing her staticky hair.

"And sell chocolate," Danny added.

"And blankets," Mike laughed, nodding to Molly.

"And square meals," I called, as the boys raced for a stall displaying forty-fives.

"A restaurant!" Sue giggled.

Molly dropped her blanket on the sidewalk. "If you need my help with the interior decorating, I'll be right here."

"Decorating what?" Mike asked as they came back to us.

"Restaurant," I explained. Danny inhaled sharply and pointed at me.

"Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I can see it now…"

"Homeless Ltd.," Mike announced, ushering an imaginary customer. "Everything for a buck."

"In New York? Are you kidding? The place would explode," I pointed out.

"So not New York," Sue shrugged.

"Santa Fe!" the boys crowed.

I saw Squeege in the distance. "Squeege could clean their cars while they ate."

We had to lean on each other to stay upright after that. We met up with Squeege and told him our plan. He just shrugged. "Honest living."

"We'd earn millions!" Danny choked.

"Sure," Mike agreed. "We'd be like Starbucks."

"Yeah!" Sue grinned. "We could- "

She was interrupted by a sheet of slushy snow splashing towards her, thrown up by the wheels of a car full of slightly more affluent artists.

Danny tried to make light of our sorry situation and untimely crash-landing from fantasyland by breaking out his crazy Christmas bell song again. It didn't work, so we launched into our most hated mantra: we begged. We'd worn out the required phrases so long ago that we could have made a song about them.

"Can't you spare a dime or two?" ("Not even a fucking dime," Danny glowered.)

"Here but for the grace of God go you," Sue implored, widening her eyes at a woman wearing a cross.

We told them it was Christmas, just in case they hadn't noticed. We promised to get into the spirit of things, even though none of us could really remember how. We spewed lists of things we weren't lucky (or possibly just stupid) enough to have: sleighbells, Santa Claus, tinsel, holly, hearths to hang stockings above.

Squeege walked up to every car on the street and was rejected by every driver. His repetitive, singsong "Honest living!" echoed around the stalls until he was practically in harmony with himself, but even that did nothing to help our cause. No-one noticed us, not even when Mike sarcastically clasped his hands together like a choirboy and graced their ears with a nasal rendition of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Even when we all helped him out (even Squeege, for fuck's sake), no-one stopped.

"No room at the holiday inn, oh, no," we pleaded. "And it's beginning to snow…"


	5. Chapter 5

Half an hour of begging later, we were exactly one dollar and twenty cents richer, and had lost a grand total of all of our dignity (except for a tiny shred Sue swore Molly had, although none of us could see it). The street had begun to clear, and most of the artists were heading for the protest against our eviction.

"It's nice to know so many people are prepared to listen to our problems," Sue commented, somehow forgetting how much they all appeared to hate us.

"Are you kidding?" Danny scoffed, pulling the inevitable paper bag-wrapped bottle from somewhere in his coat and taking a swig. "Have you seen the posters? That Maureen chick is _hot_."

He offered the bottle to Sue, who wrinkled her nose and pushed it away.

"I think we should go," she said, turning to me and Mike.

Mike shrugged. "It's inside, right? I'm there."

Sue blinked at me. "What?" I sniffed, pulling my hands inside my sleeves. "I don't care."

We trudged over to where we'd left Molly. She'd moved into the shelter of a doorway, and was snoozing, a frown of pain etched deeply into her face.

Mike nudged her gently. "Blanket Woman?"

"Do you even remember my fucking name, Michael?"

"Sure," he shrugged. "I just don't like it."

"Don't go getting smart with me," she warned. "What do you want?"

"We're going to the protest about the lot getting repossessed," Sue explained, stepping into the doorway and brushing snow off her coat sleeves. "Do you want to come?"

"Only if Danny puts that goddamn bottle away," Molly grunted, struggling to her feet. "Are you trying to look like a cliché or what?"

"If I was doing that I'd be sleeping on a bench in Central Park with a newspaper on my head," Danny retorted, but he put the bottle away.

We reached the lot and snuck in to stand up the back. The performance had already started, and Mike was right- the Maureen chick was hot. As we came in, she rang a cowbell and spat, "Diet Coke." into a mike.

"I think we missed something," Sue whispered.

Maureen began to sing. "Only thing to do is jump over the moon…"

"If that's the only way to save the tent city, we're fucked," Danny said, and laughed at his own joke until Squeege shushed him.

The performance was some kind of play in Hey Diddle Diddle, with the part of the dog being played by Maureen's hilarious impersonation of Benjamin Coffin III, who she called Benny. She got more and more excited, and finally asked the audience to moo with her.

We swapped incredulous looks, but a few moos floated up from the front row.

"Please, sir," Maureen implored, giving some unfortunate victim some fairly deadly puppy-dog eyes, "Won't you give me a little moo?"

The noise rose, until even our cynical, cold-hearted group was infected.

"No-one's evicting me for no cyber-studio," Danny yelled, and let out an explosive moo. We all joined him, grateful that someone was at least trying to help us (we'd resigned ourselves to Sue's point of view, mainly because she was surprisingly hard to argue with), even if she was wearing leather pants and clanking that cowbell like a maniac. Even Molly got into it after a while. In fact, despite her disdain for all artists great and small, I suspect she was mooing louder than any of us.


	6. Epilogue

I wish the night had ended there. I really do. I wish Sue hadn't needed to get some air. If she hadn't, we could have stayed in the lot and mooed our hearts out all night, defying the cops with our fellow tent-dwellers, or maybe snuck into the Life Café with the artists and gotten so warm we wouldn't even have needed our coats. But Sue did get claustrophobic, so we had to take her outside.

We stamped our feet and watched the snow dance as Sue gulped in lungfuls of restorative NYC air, then walked her down the street a little to calm her down. Angel, his new friend, the two blonde guys form Coffin's building, Maureen and a couple of other girls, all talking and laughing, brushed past us into the warmth of the Life Café, where Camera Boy promptly got into an argument with the waiter.

Squeege noticed the tiny shape first. It was barely more substantial than the pages of newspaper blowing around the street. But it was shivering, and as we got closer we heard it crying.

Molly rushed towards the pathetic-looking figure as fast as her back allowed her, and fell on her knees next to it, holding its shoulders as it vomited.

"Oh, shit, no," Danny whispered.

"Tina," we realised, our frozen breath curling slowly in the snowy air.

We knelt over Tina's shaking, coke-white body for the second time that week. Inside the café, we could hear the artists joyfully expressing their belief in something called Bohemia.

It was nice to know they had something to believe in.


End file.
